Man Love

OK - I'm going to talk about man love in relation to one of the least likely peddlers to have ever been involved in man on man action. Just to be clear I have no issue with man-o-man, and whatever keeps you warm at night is OK with me, but I don't think Sean Kelly was ever likely to have been sprung in the sack with another hombre no matter how cold it was.

But I love Sean Kelly. I really really love him. I guess that because I first got into bikes in the late 70's early 80's that I was always going to have a thing for someone like Kelly. I liked Phil Anderson and Allan Pieper too, cause they were Aussies, but I wanted to model myself on the Irishman.

He was not the caricature of hardness that some modern sports superstars try to carry off, he was just genuinely hard. Hard in a "I earn my keep down the pits" coal miner way. He had legs that looked like they were a prop for an anatomy lesson, with veins, tendons and gristle all on display and his form follows function approach to his uniform had the effect of making him seem to me at least to be super stylish.

There are many things that I love about Sean Kelly but a few are worth special mention.

1. His turned up cap - heaps of people did this but it seems to sit particularly well with Kelly
2. Black shoes with plain white socks - that's the way you do it kids.
3. Persistence with cleats and toe clips long after everyone else was using goofy Looks - you can almost imagine him saying "tey ha surfed ma well uta noow". Imagine being the last bloke to win a classic in cleats, toe straps and down tube shifters.
4. Bike is a tool of the trade attitude - Its commonly known that he rode a flexy flyin Vitus with neary a complaint for much of his career.
5. The last man to have a crack at just about anything - you got the feeling that you really just had to point him and say "dat whey Seeeeaan" and he would be off at a million miles an hour.
6. The fact that he was nearly unbeatable at Paris-Nice at the start of the season after presumably busting his clacker in the rain for the whole of the Irish winter.

I know I am a misty eyed old nostalgic, but why can't cycling have a bit more of what Sean Kelly was made of in it today??

Killer Kangaroo's

It was one of those lovely mornings.

A group of us had met for our standard long Sunday ride, and while the air was crisp as we started it was a classic spring time day where you knew it was going to warm up as we rolled along. It was a good group as well. A mix of abilities but all got types so the banter and piss taking got started early.

As we headed out of town, the miles were clicking by easily. As usual we rode two abrest and swapped turns at the front every couple of K's. I was riding behind my friend "Ripper", who was a good little rider, but only had sight in his right eye so you had to be careful when you were on his left. Ripper and I knew each other well as we had worked together as cleaners in a factory when we were at Uni, and so had had the sort of conversations that you can only have when you are desperately trying to avoid doing any real work.

We were riding through a bushed area with trees on each side of the road. We started to head down a bit of a gully so we were doing maybe 50kph when it happened.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move on my left. In a split second I registered that it was a Kangaroo and it was heading straight for the bunch!!!! I could see that at its current velocity it was going to contact the bunch somewhere near me, but all I could do was brace for impact. As it got within one hop of us, it seemed to realise that it was in trouble and tried with one almighty hop to go over the top. Thats right, it tried to jump over us. I realised that while I had a hole in my arse that that plan was not going to work, and watched in awe as the creature flew through the air and laid a perfect shirtfront on Ripper. It hit him with full force on the left hand shoulder. Due to his vision problem, Ripper would genuinely claim later that "I didnt see him coming".

Rip hit the ground like a bag of spuds. His lovely Eddy Merckx cartwheeling down the road while everyone did the best they could to avoid the carnage. As we all picked ourselves up and checked on Ripper we were confronted with one of the most sureal sights I have ever seen. Ripper was lying on the ground with a broken collar bone and beside him almost snuggled up was a unconcious kangaroo. We formed a circle of sweaty lycra around the two. Rip sat up and while clearly confussed about what had happened and in pain from the collar bone, he was OK. Slowely, the kangaroo came around. Lying on its side it tilted its head up and surveyed the scene. It had a look on its face which suggested it was thinking "what the f___ is going on here?" It sat there like that for about 10 seconds before one of the guys reached out and touched it gently on the nose. At that point it obviously thought - I am out of here, and it took off at a million miles an hour between two blokes legs and back into the bush.

We got Rip up and managed to push him back home. We rode in silence pretty much all the way back. As we reached town, the bloke beside me looked around and said with a solemn look on his face, "Mate, that was bullshit".

I had to agree with him.

Hard Men of Cycling - Glasses Version

Lets face it, cycling has become a "cool" sport and the kids getting into it want the look of the tanned legs, the 10k bike and the five hundred dollar shoes. And eyeware is part of the look - who doesn't want a set of new Oakley's in their Christmas stocking?

There was a time however - long before prescription inserts and contact lenses, when eyeware was a necessity rather than a fashion statement for some of the visually challenged members of the peleton.

Thats right cycling has a pretty rich tradition of coke bottle bottom wearers. The fact that a small set left you looking over the top of the rim when you were down in the drops meant that if you were a glasses wearing cyclist you inevitably needed to go "large".

But who was the "hardest" of the glasses wearers? While this seems like an oxymoron, the reality is that two of the hardest nuts to ever push the big ring in anger were of the four eyes club.

But lets get a wimpy, pussy one out of the way first so that we can have the good laugh that this breed usually deserve. Martin Earley was a pasty Irishman who could climb a bit and was your stereotypical glasses wearer in almost every way. He was hyper uncool. If Francesco Moser was at one end of the spectrum in terms of what young cyclists aspired to look like, then Martin was the other. He was just a sad little boy in a mans world and is now largely forgotten.

The next two however pulled off a feat that is truly remarkable. They wore glasses that were so big and dorky looking compared to their gold plated genuine toughness that they were actually endearingly cool in a way that a pair of Rudy Projects will never be.

Jan Raas and Gerrie Knettemen are cycling GODS. They ruled the roost when cycling was for hard men and make no mistake. They were big strong classics riders who turned the big gears and were not afraid to go toe to toe off the bike if this was required. Like Sean Kelly, they both had that otherworldly air of the true essence of cycling. An essence that seems to have been lost in the modern version with its namby pamby white shoes and color coordinated nicks and jerseys.

When I was a kid my uncle gave me a wool Ti Raleigh top. It itched like hell and all the cool kids had new lycra La Vie Claire stuff, so I hid it away in shame and ultimately I think it got tossed. What a fool was I.

What I would do now to be able to wear that top, and you know what, I would wear a pair of coke bottle glasses as a sign of respect for Jan and Gerrie. Those guys didn't care about trying to look cool - they just were.

Standout Bad Hairstyles in Cycling

There have been many notable bad barnet's in cycling over the years. Cippolini's lion king mane, Laurent Brochard's power mullet and Eric Zabel's spikey flattop are three that immediately spring to mind and would no doubt make it to the quarter final stage.

But when you start to get down to the bad of the bad it is hard to split two absolute shockers, both ironically belonging to pint sized climbers. Lucian Van Impe and Robert Miller and towering examples of why young men should not try and blindly follow the latest fashions and why perms are inherently bad.

How the hell are you meant to climb the Tourmelet with a head of hair that looks like it belongs on the shoulders of Barbara Streisand??? Well these two bone heads plummeted down this slippery slope, and rather than a quick concession that they had made a mistake, both laboured on manfully with their look for some time in spite of relentless piss taking. Van Impe even becoming known as "The Woman". This must have been heartbreaking for a Belgian who surely spent his childhood dreaming that he would one day be the "Lion of Flanders".

So while its hard to split, I have to give Van Impe the edge. If you see pictures of him now he is actually quite a good looking guy, who is clearly suited to the short back and sides look. Miller on the other hand would have looked like a dill no matter what type of hairstyle he had and is quite possibly a contender for a spot in a future blog about great ugly men in cycling.

So the winner is Van Impe. To illustrate the point I have chosen a picture after he has succumbed to mounting pressure and clearly "trimmed" the perm. Lucian, you were not fooling anyone.

How To Intimidate an Opponent

I was once on the starting line ready to start another handicap race. I was riding with a couple of guys who were ultimate "old school". I'm talking got no teeth old school - literally!!!! One of the guys had been a very good rider in his day, but it did appear that he had lost a few marbles over the journey.

With about 1 min before we were due to start he looked at me and said "hold my bike mate". Thinking he was going to adjust his shoes or something I happily complied. But old school didn't adjust his shoes. Instead, he walked over to the grass on the side of the road, pulled his old school nicks down and proceeded to lay a giant turd. Without any type of clean up proceedure he then pulled his shorts up and returned to the line. As he took his bike from me and while I watched the steaming pile over his shoulder, he nonchalantly stated "I can shit faster than I can piss".

I have never been so psyched out in all my life, and believe me, nobody wanted to be on this guys wheel for the next 100k.

The Day I Rode Against a World Champion

Right from the start I need to say that he was a world champion in a discipline of cycling other than road racing and it was a masters event, but he was a genuine world champion, and I was riding off scratch with him and another guy who had ridden in the Olympics, so I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Unfortunately I had recently received a gift from my mother in the form of a pair of BBB winner "world champion" edition glasses. I had a pretty good look going on with the glasses a new pair of shoes and I was well oiled up. I felt great as I rolled to the start with about a minute to go before our bunch got the nod. As I stood by my bike and got myself sorted Mr. World Champion (MWC) eased up beside me. He kind of starred at me for a second before saying in a slow and emotionless voice - "So you've won a ____ing world championship have ya mate?"

I knew I was in real trouble here and while I tried in vain to conjure a witty one liner, all I could come up with was - "Shit mate, they were a present from me ____ing mum."

The fact that I was 38 at the time meant that this explanation was not a particularly effective way to gain any sort of credibility in the situation.

Great Fat Cyclists of Our Time

Dario Pieri - Ate Cobblestones for Breakfast



If you were to take a quick look at this bloke you would think he was a middle age sales manager who liked early 2000’s Seaco kit for his Sunday morning ride because that was the brand of espresso machine he had just forked out a grand on.

Dario certainly did not look like a professional cyclist even when he was at his best, and believe me his best was very, very good. How good you say? Well how about second in Paris- Roubaix, fifth in Milan-Sanremo and fifteenth in the Ronde all in 2003.

By all accounts a lovely bloke, he suffered with being seen as the new “Ballerini” by the tifosi and obviously didn’t mind getting on the pies. After his stellar 2003, he should have been a big presence in 2004, but he never got it back together and seems to have disappeared after a stint with Lampre in 2005. The picture gives some idea of his “struggles” with forces greater than he could overcome.

And just as an aside - what the hell was going on with those black crotch panels in the Lampre nicks??? Jeez guys!